The Truth Behind the ‘Fight for $15’ Movement

The “fight for $15” labor movement began three years ago by disgruntled fast-food workers in New York City.

The movement was first deemed as an unlikely longshot, ignored by both multinational corporations such as McDonald’s and Burger King as well as political leaders. However, as daylong walk-outs and strikes grew larger and larger, the grass-roots energy began to pick up from coast to coast resulting in the same political leaders who ignored the problem in the first place now needing to address the issue.

Fast forward to September 2015, and it is likely the $15 minimum wage movement has been adopted by a city near you.

As of now, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have fully implemented the $15 minimum wage hike, while New York City plans to be on board by 2018, the rest of New York by mid-2021, and the District of Columbia by 2020.

The argument iterated by the workers in these cities is simple: You cannot live a decent life working full-time at $9/hour (roughly $18,000 per year) And they are correct, but missing the bigger picture.

The problem is that all of these cities rushing to implement this $15 minimum wage have one thing in common: They have all been run by Democrats over the past 50 years.

What does that mean?

In short, it means that big government is not the solution.

Here is a graph displaying how welfare spending (red line) has soured since the War on Poverty began in 1964.

census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/people.html

How could this be that Federal and state governments spent nearly $1 trillion dollars in 2013 alone on programs for poor and low-income Americans, yet the percentage of individuals who are poor (blue line) remained relatively unchanged over the past 45 years?

Let’s avoid discussion prone to fall on deaf ears and reiterate again, that government is not the solution. The welfare system is so poorly designed that it punishes the people it was created to help. In fact, the new Seattle minimum wage hike is now experiencing “unforeseen consequences” just as expected – workers are exceeding the income threshold that once allowed them government assistance for food stamps, assistance with rent, and other programs that didn’t require work. And they’re outraged.

The problems this nation currently face– record high income inequality, homelessness, and failed policy–aren’t an issue in Republican-run cities such as Plano, TX, Scottsdale, AZ, Lincoln, NE, or Chesapeake, VA.

Why?

Very simply put, cities that encourage businesses to prosper through low tax rates and less regulation barriers perform better and create more employment opportunities. This is why southern cities (such as those listed above) run by Republicans are consistently ranked as the best cities to start a business.

What do Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City also have in common? Aside from being run by big government Democrats, they rely on sky-high taxes proven to hurt poor and low-income Americans the most in order to fund big government activity.

There is enough “in-your-face” evidence to prove this, so what is the point of beating a dead horse? Taxpayers are migrating away from Democrat-run states to Republican-run states by the hundreds of thousands.

The point here is to bring reality and facts of the matter back into the minds of a younger audience susceptible to Republican-hating rhetoric taught by professors by day and left-wing media outlets by night.

No one is entitled to their own facts.

McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food restaurants SHOULD answer the protesters by implementing automated self-service checkouts similar to those at WaWa. This would really scare their disgruntled employees and set the Union Bosses back to realize that their labor is CERTAINLY not valued at $15/hr.